Aaron Franklin's Brisket Secret

hey guys welcome to mad scientist barbecue i'm jeremy oder and today i'm going to show you what i think is aaron franklin's brisket cooking secret so i'm going to discuss what i think is the secret ingredient and secret method that aaron franklin uses to make his briskets so incredibly juicy but first i have to say i can't verify that this is what he does i've never worked there i've never seen him do it i don't know that this is what he does but based on things that i've seen and things that i've heard this is my best guess as to what happens that gives him maybe a leg up on other people when it comes to making incredibly juicy briskets also have to note that aaron franklin is a better brisket cook than i am so this isn't me trying to you know one-up him or anything like that it's just for me i'm not in love with the things that i know how to do well in barbecue i'm in love with the pursuit of learning new things and this is something i wanted to learn and i thought well i want to learn what the guy who's the absolute best at this does so that maybe i can do it as well as he does now i don't think i've gotten to that point but hopefully this moved me one step closer along that path the secret ingredient is in my opinion beef tala beef tallow is just the rendered fat of beef so what lard is to pork tallow is to beef and i think that it's the best explanation as to what we can see in franklin's brisket i used to think that it was 100 that he just had the process nailed so he figured out how to do everything perfectly now i think that's 99 percent of why his brisket is great and i think this might be the extra one percent so why do i think it's beef tallow to explain that i have to take you back a little ways several years ago i watched a video on youtube actually it was a series of videos that aaron franklin did and it was in three parts on how to cook a brisket and i remember watching that and thinking something's off and the first thing i noticed was that the brisket that went on looked like an 18-pound brisket and a nice big one but the brisket that came off looked like it was maybe five and a half six pounds i thought that's too much shrinkage for you know that one brisket during the cook there are other things that i could get into but i don't want to belabor that point i just started to examine the videos that featured in franklin critically now i get why they did that it was for the production purposes the crew probably didn't want to stand around for 16 hours while aaron franklin was cooking a brisket so i understand why they did it but every time i watched an aaron franklin video i was looking for those kinds of things so when i watched a bon appetit video where they sent a guy to work at franklin barbecue for 24 hours i was looking at everything trying to figure out exactly what was going on and one thing i noticed was when they were pulling the briskets off after they've been wrapped when they were done in the wrap there's lots of liquid as a matter of fact the guy who was working there accidentally punctured one of the butcher paper wraps and lots of liquid float out but that was totally different than when i went to franklin bbq i noticed that the briskets that they unwrap on the line don't have that liquid in there so i thought oh they must re-wrap it in new butcher paper in addition i noticed that the butcher paper was soaked in grease and the briskets themselves glistened with rendered fat so i thought well how is that possible because there wouldn't be enough grease just sitting on that brisket to soak that whole piece of paper so i thought they must be adding some other source of fat i thought what kind of fat would they be adding could they add duck fat or butter thought no probably not those would change the flavor so the most logical choice was that they were adding beef tallow to the wrap on the butcher paper when they're wrapping the briskets before they hold them and slice them for service now you may ask why does this matter it matters because what you perceive as moisture when you eat barbecue is usually rendered fat there's a reason why on the reheating instructions for a franklin brisket that you order online it suggests adding butter because it adds fat and therefore moisture to what you're eating now i don't think he's going to reveal probably that he's using beef tallow if that's in fact what he's using again i don't know but the evidence that i've seen points me to beef tallow is the source of all that glistening fat that you see that makes a franklin brisket so special so to figure out if this could possibly be a secret to getting super crazy moist brisket we're going to test it and what we're going to do to test it is i'm going to try to cook these briskets as much like franklin cooks his as i possibly can i'm going to do one without adding beef tallow to the wrap and the other i'm going to add beef towel to the wrap when it's cooking and then after it's done i'm going to re-wrap it in butcher paper that's covered in beef tala the two briskets are ready to be wrapped started them at midnight so a little after nine right now time to wrap them up the first one i'm gonna wrap exactly the way i always do so no beef towel the second one i'm gonna put beef tallow this stuff right here all over the butcher paper where it makes contact with the brisket and then we're gonna cook them to completion brisket number one [Music] back on the smoke [Music] now before the second brisket goes on i'm going to cover the part of this butcher paper that it's going to touch with some beef [Music] tongue so [Music] we're going to leave those on until they hit about 203 degrees internal or when you probe them they feel like butter now you may be wondering what's this thing i'm wearing around my neck it's the thermal work smoke and it's just a remote thermometer so i have a probe in there that tells me the temperature of the pit and so when i'm inside right now it's really cold like my ears are burning because it's so cold i can be in the comfort of the warmth inside and still know what the temperature of the pit is out here so that's what this thing is but we're gonna let them cook when they're done we're gonna check back in and we're gonna unwrap them see if they look any different briskets are off this is the one without beef tallow this is the one with beef tallow and just to kind of prove a point from the video we saw i'm going to kind of tear open this butcher paper because i have to re-wrap this anyway we're going to see what comes out i could have kept going but my hands were actually getting really hot so i had to stop at this point this paper comes off new paper goes down covered in beef tallow wrap it up again let it rock going down i'm going nuts with it we'll see [Music] so i'm going to take these two put them inside let them cool to about 145 degrees then we're going to take them out slice them both [Music] right the first brisket we have here is the one that was cooked with the beef tallow and let me tell you it looks incredible glistening everywhere like a franklin brisket nice dark bark nothing got too soupy and washed the bark away i'm very pleased with how it looks now what we've got to do is slice it open and taste test it and we're going to see if it's actually going to be more moist than the one that was cooked without the beef talon [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] that's good stuff so perfect wow incredible moisture i mean better than anything i've ever seen also the bark is preserved it doesn't get soupy doesn't wash it away if this isn't what aaron franklin does um maybe he should start but my goodness this is great stuff it's just just perfect exactly the way you'd want each bite so this is the end cut it's relatively lean but with all the beef towel that's on the board it kind of picks up what's there and then each bite becomes crazy moist crazy juicy for such a lean part of the brisket now this brisket ideally would have rested a lot longer but we got to get the filming done it was about moisture more so than exactly the tenderness we want but it's still nice and tender but if you let them rest for longer i think franklin rests his briskets for something around 11 or 12 hours if you did that you would have an even more tender product it's the kind of thing where it just looks like the meat gives and i think that's the only thing this is missing the beef tallow i think made a big difference but let's compare it to the one that didn't get any beef taller and see how much different it is here we have the one that was cooked without the beef tallow and just looking at it it looks a lot drier the underside looks way drier but there's no real way to tell exactly how it's going to be until we cut it open take a look and give it a taste [Music] so flavor's good flavor is pretty much the same definitely drier because that outside isn't covered with that rendered fat so things don't slide and slip past each other while you're chewing nearly as much as they do with the one that's cooked with beef tallow let me try another bite maybe from somewhere else maybe see if that's a little bit different give this a try same thing good flavor just dry it's not as though this is you know super bone dry and gross it's just after eating the one that has so much rendered fat on it this just doesn't compare it's just not the same the one with the beef tallow is definitely superior as you can see the brisket cooked with beef tallow is definitely different than the one cooked without it now i prefer to cook briskets a little bit differently in terms of how long i cook them unwrapped versus how long i cooked them wrapped the overall cook time a bunch of stuff like that but in an effort to try to mimic exactly what franklin does i use the times that i was able to glean from the video that i watched now it could be in large part a problem of his cooker works differently than mine so they're both large offsets but maybe the airflow is a lot different than those thousand gallon pits that he uses i don't exactly know for me i would want more time on the smoke just to make sure that smoke flavor comes through absolutely crystal clear here it's there it's clear but i want more of it i want it to be you know a standalone thing and then everything else kind of marries with it the flavor of the meat the flavor the salt the moisture that we've added to me that's the way to do it now as far as the beef tallow whether or not it's effective i think this to me proves that it's absolutely effective so in the future i'm going to be cooking briskets my way in terms of time and how i wrap except i'm going to be adding beef tail out of mine and there's no question about that please leave a comment down below to tell me whether or not you think this is the thing that aaron franklin does or if you don't think aaron franklin does anything or you think he does something different please let me know you can also subscribe to the channel if you like this video you can hit the like button as well and then you can also follow me on twitter and instagram mad scientist barbecue i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Mad Scientist BBQ

Views: 512,069

Rating: 4.9302635 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: FOYHl0lDnGI

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/redtryer]

He actually says it in his videos... not much of a secret... so doubt that’s his secret

[u/sybrwookie]

Just watched Mad Scientist? checks link Yup, just watched Mad Scientist.